ENGN/PHYS 207—Fall 2020

October 21, 2020

Transimpedance Amplifier Design Worksheet: Lights, Current, Voltage!

Transimpedance amplifier in 3 easy steps

Let’s look at Transimpedance Amplifiers. Because, hey, why not? They are op-amp based circuit
used to convert an electrical current into a measurable voltage signal. We’ll build up to the final
circuit that we’ll build in lab this week (to be incorporated into your PPG final project!) in 3 easy
steps. Our circuits road map is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Op-amp based transimpedance (TIA) amplifier design. The TIA’s circuits job is to con-
vert a photocurrent Ipd into corresponding voltage signal. (A): Simplest possible TIA design with
single feedback resistor and photodiode in photovoltaic mode. Path of current flow through feed-
back resistor and photodiode is indicated. Note the direction of current flow. (B): Compensation
capacitor Cf incorporated into design. The parallel combination of Rf and Cf form a low-pass
filter, which also serves to stabilize TIA behavior. (C): Symmetric design incorporating parallel
combo of Rp and Cp .

1. Circuit (A):

(a) Is this op-amp in negative feedback?

(b) Do both golden rules apply?
(c) Show that

Vout (t) = Ipd (t) Rf (1)

Note carefully the direction of current flow. This just says that the output voltage is
proportional to the photodiode current, scaled by the feedback resistor value.
(d) What value of Rf would you choose in practice? Assume you have a rail-to-rail op-amp
powered by +3.3 V and GND. Assume the photocurrent magnitude is≈ 1µA, so you
want 1 Volt of output for every 1 µA of photocurrent.

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 (e) Lastly, what is the voltage difference across the photodiode? The point here is that
op-amp holds the photodiode in photovoltaic mode. This decreases the dark current
to 0!

2. Circuit (B): Here we have added a feedback capacitor Cf in parallel with Rf . Looks like a
familiar best-circuits buddies are back again!

(a) Intuitively, what kind of filtering is involved here?

(b) Show that  
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Vout (t) = Ipd (t) Rf (2)
1 + jωRf Cf
(c) Compute the cutoff frequency.
(d) Our plan in the future is to shine brief pulses of red and IR light onto the photodiode.
The pulse width for each is T =≈220 µs. Compute the corresponding fundamental
frequency f = 1/T . Will these pulses pass through or be attenuated?1 if you find
these 220µs would be cut off, what could and should you do in practice to remedy the
situation?2

3. Circuit (C): Compared to circuit B, we’ve made a symmetric design by added another
resistor Rp and capacitor Cp . They are connected between the non-inverting input and
ground.

(a) Intuitively, what kind of filter does the Rp ||Cp combo make?
(b) Assuming that Rp ||Cp = Rf ||Cf , which is indeed our actual design here, show that:
 
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Vout (t) = 2 Ipd (t) Rf (3)
1 + jωRf Cf

(c) Compute the cutoff frequency of this circuit. Did it change relative to circuit B?
(d) Assume there is a constant photocurrent flowing is Ip =1 µA. Compute the output
voltage. Note the factor of 2 out front in the RHS Eqn 3.
(e) Also, compute the voltage at non-inverting terminal of the op-amp. The point here
is that this added resistor forces the op-amps inputs out of negative saturation (held
at ground potential). This typically results in much better op-amp performance. The
op-amp doesn’t really like to come out of saturation and get quickly to work right after
getting out of bed (being in our metaphorical ground state).

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The actual situation is a bit more complex. Our phasor analysis is built upon sine waves. Here we have square
waves. Fourier theory teaches us thatP we can build square waves from a summation of sine waves with integer
multiples of the fundamental x(t) = n an cos(nωt + φn ). So the high order harmonics (higher values of n) may get
cut off. But so long as the fundamental passes through we should be reasonably OK in practice.
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Just in case, we have a whole range of ≈10 pF capacitors in Circuits lab.